11 February 2013

An increasingly problematic aspect of free trade agreements (FTAs) is
the inclusion of investor-state provisions that essentially allow
companies -- typically huge multinationals -- to challenge
the policies of signatory governments directly. The initial impulse
behind these was to offer some protection against the arbitrary
expropriation of foreign investments by less-than-democratic
governments. But now corporations have realised that they can use the
investor-state dispute mechanism to challenge all kinds of legitimate
but inconvenient decisions in any signatory nation. Here's a good
example of how this provision is being invoked to contest a refusal by Canadian courts to grant a patent on a drug, as explained on the Public Citizen site:

About Me

I have been a technology journalist and consultant for 30 years, covering
the Internet since March 1994, and the free software world since 1995.

One early feature I wrote was for Wired in 1997:
The Greatest OS that (N)ever Was.
My most recent books are Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, and Digital Code of Life: How Bioinformatics is Revolutionizing Science, Medicine and Business.